The Fool's Lament
by Blackcat8991
Summary: We've met the Fool, the Lunatic, the Jester; but we've never met the man before the madness. What is it that makes a man crazed? Is it a traumatic event, a slow descent, or was it always there to begin with?...
1. Prologue

The Fool's Lament

Author's Note: Hello, hello once again. Another amount of time has passed since my last story. I often find that I like to go back and forth between original fiction and fan fiction depending on my mood. Today is definitely a fan fiction day, this time for the Elder Scrolls, more specifically Skyrim. I'm slightly ashamed to say that it's the only Elder Scrolls game I've played, although hopefully I'll get my hands on Oblivion very soon. I wrote this story mainly because I was surprised that no one (at least to my knowledge) had fleshed out Cicero's back story from his journals. That being said, since I have not played Oblivion, or any older Elder Scrolls game, I am not very familiar with Cyrodiil in general, which is mainly where Cicero's story takes place. So if I do get something wrong in my descriptions, please point this out to me. Thank you! And please enjoy!

Prologue

Many pairs of heavy soled leather boots stomped over the mossy stone of the sanctuary floor as the family hurried to the small, dirty room in which the Fool had slept, just off of the main chamber which housed the Night Mother's coffin. Arnbjorn was gone, he'd run after the Fool into the night, and the family was afraid that he would very soon, or was more likely, already dead. The Fool had betrayed them, betrayed the family that had so graciously welcomed him into their home with open arms. Well, maybe not _open_ , per say. The Fool had had an air about him, one that had made the others keep their distance. It was an air of something not quite right; it scared them.

And now he'd run, but only after his insane attempt to kill Veezara, who now lay under the care of Babette. Arnbjorn had chased him out into the cold, dead night, and the rest of the family dug around the small room for a clue, any sort of clue, that might tell them where the Fool had gone.

The betrayal had shaken all of them. Babette tended to Veezara, the Argonian seemed pretty out of it, and she appeared calm. But 300 years of life had given her the opportunity to prefect her poker face, which was the best known to man or mer, and even still her hands shook as she scrambled around her alchemy lab, searching for the ingredients to an antidote that would sap the poison coursing through Veezara's body, towards his heart, which had festered on the Fool's knife. Nazir's eyebrows crinkled in confusion and concern, and for once, he made no jokes. In fact, not a single word exited his mouth as he dug around in the Fool's wooden chest in vain. Festus was humming nervously to himself, and kept swallowing, as if he had something stuck in his throat, and Gabriella muttered something that sounded an awful lot like "Great Sithis", as she and the old mage turned over the Fool's mattress. But Astrid was the worst of all. Her eyes burned with a hatred that went unparalleled in the history of Tamriel, but she seemed unable to direct her hate towards anything in particular. She paced back and forth across the room, flitting from task to task, but not able to focus on one thing, all of the while alternating between whispering and shouting "I _knew_ he couldn't be trusted! I just knew it!"

Only the Listener seemed unaffected by the infectious attitude of her family. She seemed more numb than anything, or maybe just hard from the years of killing behind her, as she peered thoughtfully around the room, almost as if the task before them was as simple as finding the most efficient way to rearrange the furniture. Finally, after a few minutes of introspection, she strode calmly across the room to the one place that was unoccupied by frantic searchers, an unassuming, wooden cabinet. It opened with a mighty creak that shook its brittle frame. Inside, piled up so high that they fell out on top of the Listener as she opened the door, she found many, many lumpy packages of linen, each holding something seemingly different. Keepsakes? Possibly. But knowing the Fool, it could very easily have been something much, much worse.

But the Listener shrugged and began digging through the parcels, sifting through the pile for anything useful. It was difficult to guess what exactly she should have been looking for, for it was impossible to tell just what was in each parcel, for they were all different lumpy shapes and sizes. But soon, the Listener found a strange, uniformly square package that almost seemed to have the correct size and dimensions to be a book. Or several books, now that she felt along the side where she could swear she felt pages. If there was one thing she had learned in the years that she had traveled, it was that books were highly useful things. Books contained knowledge. A book just might tell them where a deranged lunatic might have slunk away to. Carefully, the Listener unraveled the linen wrapped around the square parcel, and inside, found exactly what she had expected to find: several books, five of them, now that she looked, tied together with a bit of string. They looked very old and faded, or maybe just not respected, as books should be.

She didn't open them, it was not her place. "Astrid", she called over her shoulder, and said family member shot across the room faster than a crossbow bolt. Astrid stared at the thin books for a second before her mind shuttered into the right gear and she realized how important they might be. She feverishly snatched them from the Listener, who had been holding them in front of her face, as if they were the most important artifact ever unearthed. Astrid seized the string, and yanked on it with her bare hands. It was supple, and held firm for a moment before snapping against Astrid's iron willpower.

"Everyone", she called to the rest of the family, and the room abruptly went silent. If Astrid was demanding their attention, then they had better well listen, for any plan was better than none, and if anyone could come up with a brilliant plan, it was Astrid. She smiled, back in a position of power, no longer helpless. These people, this family, would listen to what she had to say, and it calmed her. "The Listener just found these books. They might tell us where Cicero's gone".

The change in atmosphere was immediate. Calm swept across the flustered room, and the family gathered around Astrid, the immovable, calmingly present leader of their little patch of the world. She opened the first book, which, conveniently had a number one written on the cover. The pages creaked and moaned as she did so, maybe from water damage or general disuse. Astrid took a deep breath as the family leaned in closer to catch every word, and she began to read...


	2. The New Beginning

AN: I recently picked up Oblivion for the Steam sale, and I'm really glad I did. There are so many things in this chapter that I guessed at that were not true at all. So hopefully, I actually kind of know what I'm talking about now. Yay!

Chapter One:

The New Beginning

Fire. It had all ended with fire. The Bruma Sanctuary, burned to the ground, taking everything Cicero had ever known or loved with it. His family, his friends, and his darling Camilla, all gone, snatched before his eyes by the hungry yellow flames.

He'd been taking care of a contract in Anvil when it happened. By the time he'd returned, everything had disintegrated to ash. The contract was the only thing that had kept him from suffering the same fate. His _damned_ contract. Though he felt grateful to Lord Sithis for sparing his life, but at the same time he wished that he had perished with them. He was all alone without them.

Now, he gazed upon the only home he'd ever known for the last time. Well, the burned remains of his home, he supposed, but his home none the less. He was an orphan, stranded, a single seed spared the horrid fate of his others. The only survivor. But he was not alone. The Black Hand had sent word, told him of the _other_ sanctuary, a place for him to live and continue his contracts for the Dark Brotherhood. It was in Cheydinhal, all the way across the north of Cyrodiil.

So here he stood, surveying his one true home for what would be the final time. He saw the burned tapestries and the stone that was too solid to burn. It almost seemed like a metaphor. You could burn the tapestries but you can't burn the stone? Cicero shrugged. He was never one for metaphors.

It had come as a shock to know that the purification had spread even to Cyrodiil, the unofficial capital of crime, a stinking cesspit of corruption and deceit. In other words, the perfect place for an assassin to ply his trade. And yet, someone had wanted them gone, the Bruma sanctuary wiped right off of the map. It could have been a righteous holy man, or the family member or friend of someone whom the Brotherhood had been hired to eliminate; they had many enemies. Any one of them could end the lives of the assassins with a snap of their fingers, if only they could have found them. But somehow, they had. It was terrifying to think about just how precipitous the cliff was that Cicero had been standing over for all of these years.

He trudged slowly up the stone steps that had been carved into the earth after a millennia of use, savouring the echo that his made in the vast silence of the sanctuary. So many times had he climbed these stairs, often pondering a tricky problem that a new contract caused him, that he couldn't actually conceive the idea in his mind that this would be _the last time_. His mind almost tricked him into thinking that he was just going out on a contract, and he would be back soon. But the staircase was short, and too soon, Cicero reached the door of the sanctuary.

From the inside, it looked like a plain slab of stone, carved from the rock face; the one notable feature being an indent in the stone shaped like a hand, a hand worn deep into the rock by the countless brothers and sisters who had come before him. Now there would be none, the sanctuary left to be forgotten, alone, lost in the folds of time. Cicero sighed, never had he thought that his hand would be the last to push open the Black Door.

Grey, hard light flooded into the deep peace of the sanctuary, along with a harsh, snowy wind that bit at Cicero's cheeks and nose. He had the push hard for the door to open amid the deep snow. The north of Cyrodiil was a cold, harsh place, but it was the perfect location to hide a den of assassins. It was a place for a family to hide from the harsh realities of life, a place where they could live, and kill, together away from the fear of discovery.

Someone, somehow, had come across it, someone with reason to order it burned to the ground. How it had happened Cicero couldn't even begin to guess. The possibility of a traitor in their midst had crossed his mind, he was ashamed to admit. But as he thought of his poor brothers and sisters, of Camilla, he knew that none of them could have ever betrayed them.

"What is the goal of life?" Cicero paused, and turned back to the Black Door. It had asked him the passcode, although he had answered the password long ago. The door seemed sad, lonely even, as if it didn't want Cicero to leave. But it couldn't have, a door couldn't think.

Cicero sighed, turning away from the Bruma sanctuary, never to return. He was about to head into a terrifying, huge world, starting with the snowy forest before him. Before he walked off into the world he turned back to the door, feeling as if he owed it one final answer: "Death, my brother".


End file.
